September 25, 2007

A Sad Tale of the Drunk and Idiotic in Wine Country

When it comes to Long Island, or any other wine country, it's important to remember that there will always be times when—no matter steps a winery takes to avert unfortunate, drunken incidents—a pathetic subset of losers will still act like jerks and ruin the fun for everybody else.

With that in mind, I wanted to share a story I heard via email over the weekend from a tasting room manager who will remain nameless for obvious reasons. Out of respect for this individual and other
parties involved, I’ll keep my version of the story appropriately anonymous—except for an interesting piece of information at the end.

The tasting room manager and his staff did all of the right things here, but drunk imbeciles caused a problem anyway.

Basically what happened is that last Saturday
night, a
limousine pulled into the parking lot this particular winery—a winery
known for making quality wine. This winery also has an obvious, well-placed
sign that clearly informs
potential visitors that buses, vans and
limousines are only taken by appointment. I've been told in the past
that this is their policy because they want to provide educational and
entertaining tastings and need to know ahead of time to make sure that
the tasting room has the room, staff and
other resources to ensure the desired experience. Avoiding incidents
like the one that was about to ensue is no doubt an unspoken reason as
well.

So, a limousine pulled up to the door, and the
driver got
out. A staff member went outside to greet the limousine. Because there
was no
reservation on the books for this particular time, the staff member
first asked if the group had a reservation. The driver asked the group
inside the limousine, then replied “No, no reservation.”

The staff member then politely explained that it
wasn't
possible to take the group, that they had a policy of requiring
reservations
for larger groups, and for any group traveling by bus, van, or
limousine. Of course, the staff member also told me that he thought
to himself that it was probably a good thing this group didn’t have a
reservation,
because the group was--judging by the volume, tone and language of the
voices
in the limo--quite drunk. The sight of a wine bottle being waved around
in
someone’s fist emerging from the open door only served to strengthen
this
perception.

Fortunately, the group seemed to take the information in
some degree of stride. The driver was cordial and the staff member was
satisfied that the matter was settled successfully. He went back inside.

Within
minutes, however, members of the group started coming into the tasting
room anyway. And this was not a group of “kids”—the individuals were
all easily into their thirties and forties. The first to enter was a
woman (with
a shoe falling off) who wobbled to the restroom, paying no attention to
the staff
on hand. She was
followed into the tasting room by two guys who started looking at some
of
the gift items on display. The staff member went over to talk to them,
and they
said they were just interested in buying some gifts, and asked if that
would be okay. The
staff member begrudgingly complied, hoping essentially to defuse the
difficulty of the situation, and speed up the group’s departure.

One of the men then said something to the effect of, “So, since I’m buying
something, I can do a tasting now, right?” The staff member apologized again,
and reiterated the limo policy. At this point, the guy got very aggressive and
confrontational, and tried to argue. The staff member went to the front door,
opened it, and said “You can go now, It’s time to leave.” They exited, saying “f*&k you” as they left.

The woman re-emerged from the restroom shortly
thereafter and started in on
the staff member as well, who simply kept repeating “Your group has
been asked
to leave.” A second woman, who had also come in, snipped, “It’s too
bad, because
we come here a lot,” to which the staff member politely but pointedly
observed,
“Then you should have known better than to have arrived without a
reservation,” He also thought but didn't say, that she also should have
known better than to have
shown up that drunk.

Rather than getting back into their limo and going on their way, the
group proceeded to do something that can only be described as
disgusting. They hovered
around the front door of the tasting room and proceeded to pour wine on
the entry way and surrounding areas. They also
dumped a bunch of garbage on the ground--plastic cups, cigarette butts
and the
now-empty bottles of another Long Island producer’s wine.

Of course, it's almost as disgusting that this producer served these people given their condition.

This story is already sad and unfortunate enough, but it gets worse. A woman from
the group went back inside, and got the attention of another staff
member. While patronizingly patting this staff member’s arm, the woman, quite
literally struggling to speak clearly and coherently, said (I'm paraphrasing), “I just thought you should know that I’m from Newsday, and
I’m going to let everyone know how open you are to having people come here. I
just thought I’d tell you that.”

Now, one of two things is going on here. Either some
rude, stupid and drunk woman is out there impersonating a Newsday staff member and
giving the paper an undeserved bad name. Or, sadly, the obnoxious,
inappropriate and drunken behavior of visitors traveling by limousine
that we’ve all been hearing so much about lately is not being perpetrated by a
subset of classless individuals who don’t know better, but in fact by the very
people who claim to support the region, and who absolutely should indeed know
better.

Comments

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Hmmm, that's pretty bad. I think situations like this might be avoided if the limo companies trained their drivers a little better--he should never have even stopped there. I hope the winery was able to contact the limo service about the incident.

I agree that the staff did the right thing here. To have served this group simply to avoid a confrontation would have likely only resulted in further property damage and possible injuries to the drunken party or staff. The customer who admitted to working at Newsday should be ashamed of herself, given how much the publication has done to promote the region in a positive way. If I were her manager and heard about the incident, I would terminate her for representing Newsday so poorly.

That said, I also agree that the limo drivers are largely to blame in these situations. At the winery where I work, we have frequently caught limo drivers letting their passengers out in the street or up the road rather than in the driveway to avoid being turned away for not making a reservation. It's all very underhanded, and would seem unnecessary if they believed their passengers were fit to enter the establishment.

Sadly, this kind of garbage is par for the course in NorCal. Fortunately, one learns which wineries to avoid later in the day when the knuckleheads crawl out of their caves... er... limos.

The one thing I'll respectfully disagree with you on, though, is your note that the earlier winery shouldn't have served the group in the condition they were in.

It's entirely possible that (a) they were turned away at the prior winery they'd stopped at, (b) that they were drinking from a bottle they'd purchased several stops earlier, and/or (c) they didn't go way overboard until they'd re-entered their limo before they stopped at that final winery.

Let's just hope no one else served them after this unfortunate incident.

Fatemeh: In my quest to keep this anonymous, I couldn't mention that the winery that had sold them the bottles of wine was right up the street...the last winery that they would have gone to before getting to the one in question.

And while I do agree with you that you can sometimes learn what wineries to avoid...in such a small, condensed region like LI, it clearly doesn't matter.

The winery in question here is not one where you'd expect this to happen, trust me.